Was TLC hit by ransomware?

TLC was listed by the Karakurt ransomware operation (United States), and stolen data was published on the group's leak site. Darkfield tracks this disclosure with the original leak post, screenshot and group context.

Who is the Karakurt ransomware group?

Karakurt is a ransomware operator tracked by Darkfield. See the full operator dossier for its known victims, sectors targeted, IOCs and leak-site infrastructure.

What data was leaked in the TLC breach?

Karakurt published data attributed to TLC (~1 TB). Darkfield captured the leak post and a screenshot of the listing.

Ransomware victim disclosure

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TLC (Discovery, Inc.)

listed as TLC · Claimed by Karakurt · listed 4 years ago

1 TB

Data size

43m

Age

since listed · data leaked

Status timeline

ListedDec 18, 2022
Data leakeddate unknown

At a glance

Group: Karakurt
Status: Data leaked
Country: United States
Sector: Media & Entertainment
Listed on leak site: Dec 18, 2022
Data size: 1 TB

About the victim

AI dossier — public-source company profile

TLC is a cable television network and global media brand available in more than 84 million US homes and 270 million households worldwide, operating across more than 220 countries and territories. It is part of Discovery, Inc. (NASDAQ: DISCA, DISCB, DISCK), a portfolio company specialising in non-fiction, lifestyle, and real-life content. TLC content is also available on the discovery+ streaming subscription service.

Industry: Cable Television & Streaming Media
Founded: 1972

Attack summary

Severity: critical — Confirmed exfiltration of ~1 TB of data including employee PII at scale, proprietary production materials, and internal business documentation from a major global media brand, with data already published.

Karakurt claims to have exfiltrated approximately 1 TB of data from TLC, including production scripts, videos, internal documentation, and employee personal information; the disclosure status is listed as data_published indicating the data has been released or made available.

critical

Data the group says was taken

AI dossier — extracted from the leak post

Production scripts
Video content
Internal documentation
Employee personal information

What the group claims

TLC is a global brand available in more than 84 million homes in the US and 270 million households around the world. Viewers can enjoy their favorite shows anytime, anywhere on discovery+, the definitive non-fiction, real-life subscription streaming service. A destination online, TLC offers in-depth fan sites and exclusive original video content. TLC is part of Discovery (NASDAQ: DISCA, DISCB, DISCK), reaching 3 billion cumulative viewers in more than 220 countries and territories to satisfy curiosity and captivate superfans with a portfolio of premium nonfiction, lifestyle, sports and kids content brands. In this case we will provide you with almost 1 TB of their scripts, videos, internal documentation, as well as personal information of employees and much more.

Sources

Leak posthttps://3f7nxkjway3d223j27lyad7v5cgmyaifesycvmwq7i7cbs23lb6llryd.onion/companies/ce82fd19-1178-4c98-8b11-e6aa34ddfe69pytb

Source

Indexed 4 years ago

This page surfaces a public ransomware disclosure indexed by Darkfield. Original posts come from the operator's own leak site; we cross-check against ransomware.live, RansomLook and RansomWatch where applicable. Share this URL freely.

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Disclosure context

About Karakurt

Karakurt is a ransomware group that emerged in December 2022, operating primarily as a data extortion threat actor with financial motivations rather than traditional file encryption. The group's origin and affiliations remain largely undocumented by major cybersecurity agencies, though their operational patterns suggest they function as an independent entity rather than a confirmed ransomware-as-a-service operation. Karakurt employs data theft and extortion tactics, focusing on exfiltrating sensitive information from victim networks before demanding payment under threat of public disclosure, representing a pure extortion model that bypasses traditional encryption-based ransomware approaches. The group has targeted 74 known victims across multiple sectors, with particular focus on healthcare, education, manufacturing, energy, and professional services organizations, primarily affecting entities in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Singapore, and India. Based on available reporting from established cybersecurity agencies and researchers, Karakurt appears to remain active as of recent assessments, though comprehensive intelligence on their specific attack vectors, tools, and major campaigns remains limited in publicly documented sources from CISA, FBI, and major security research organizations. The group has been linked to 74 public disclosures across our corpus. First observed on a leak site on December 11, 2022; most recent post September 22, 2023. The operation is currently inactive.

Timeline of this disclosure

December 18, 2022TLC listed by Karakurton the group's public leak site

Data size: 1 TB

Other recent disclosures by Karakurt

Karakurt has been linked to 74 public victims on Darkfield. A sample of the most recent:

See the full Karakurt dossier →

Sector and geography

This disclosure adds to ransomware activity in the Media & Entertainment sector, which has 97 disclosures indexed across all operators we track. Geographically, TLC is reported in United States, a country with 11,033 ransomware disclosures in our corpus.

If your organisation is affected

A listing by Karakurt means TLC appeared on a ransomware extortion site and data attributed to it has been published. If this is your organisation, or a supplier you depend on, the priority is to confirm the intrusion and contain it before the window to act closes.

Engage your incident-response team and preserve forensic evidence before remediating — do not wipe affected systems first.
Force a password reset and revoke active sessions for exposed accounts; rotate any credentials, API keys or certificates that may have been in the stolen data.
Assess regulatory notification duties (GDPR, NIS2, sector regulators) — many carry a 72-hour reporting clock from awareness.
Report the incident to your national CERT, CISA (United States), as required for your jurisdiction.
Monitor for the data appearing on Karakurt's leak site and across paste and breach channels, and brief downstream partners who may be exposed through you.

How we know this. Darkfield monitors public ransomware leak sites continuously, archiving every new disclosure and the data later released against the victim. Each entry on this page is sourced from the operator's own publication and cross-checked against complementary OSINT feeds (RansomLook, ransomware.live, RansomWatch). We do not collect or host stolen data — only the metadata, timestamps and screenshots needed to make the public disclosure searchable and accountable. Records here are corrected when the original post is edited, retracted, or merged with another disclosure.